


(i want your) stupid love

by obbel



Category: Latin American Celebrities RPF, Reggaetón Music RPF
Genre: COVID-19, Fluff, M/M, Reggaetón RPF - Freeform, mild crack, social distancing, written in quarantine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24060928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obbel/pseuds/obbel
Summary: Two idiots in quarantine don’t really know how to say “I miss you.”
Relationships: J Balvin/Maluma
Comments: 10
Kudos: 13





	(i want your) stupid love

At six thirty sharp, Maluma’s doorbell rings. Bonnie and Clyde start barking right away, and when Maluma ignores all of them, they start howling at the potential home invader. He sits up, begrudgingly, and gets out of bed, taking the elevator downstairs to go see who it is.

There’s no one there when he opens the door. There is, however, a take out box sitting innocuously on the ground. He opens it up and steam escapes, enveloping him in the enticing aromas of fettuccine alfredo and garlic bread.

Maluma takes his surprise meal into the dining room and sits down. He props his phone up against the mini horse table decoration and hits FaceTime.

“Why did you send me a box of carbs when you know I’ve spent the last week lying down?”

“Thank you, José, for thinking of me, for sending me dinner in these trying times,” Balvin says in a breathy caricature of Maluma’s voice. He seems nonplussed at the lack of formal greeting.

Maluma shoves a forkful of pasta in his mouth as a response. He tries to chew angrily, but it’s too delicious. Cheese and garlic and sin. Balvin waits for him to swallow.

“Thanks,” Maluma mutters at him. “Artigiani?”

“Of course,” Balvin says placidly.

Maluma switches between glaring at the pasta and glaring at Balvin through the phone. “This is sabotage,” he grumbles, pointing his fork accusingly at the screen.

“No one is forcing you to eat,” Balvin points out. Maluma stabs in the direction of the front camera, careful not to get sauce on his phone. Balvin laughs at him. “Hurry up. It’s going to get cold. Leave some room for dessert, though.”

Maluma groans, and Balvin ends the call with a few air kisses in his general direction.

“Yeah, yeah,” Maluma says to himself, and he goes back to eating.

He doesn’t listen to Balvin’s advice, finishing the whole plate in an alarmingly short amount of time. He’s leaning back in the chair, hand on his stomach when the doorbell rings again. Maluma opens the door, and this time there’s a large slice of chocolate cake accompanied by a dozen roses. He shakes his head at the sight, but he takes the gifts inside. The cake goes in the fridge for later. The roses will go on the table, once he finds a vase. Right now, he’s going back into hibernation.

—

“Really?” Balvin asks him.

Maluma is lying on a hammock he found in storage while he was looking for something else. It took him the better part of the morning to set it up outside, mostly because he kept getting distracted by other cool things he found. He has more statues than he thought.

Regardless, he eventually got the hammock strung up, no thanks to Clyde, who kept snatching the ends and running off. Now he’s lying on the hammock, trying to avoid the wet patches, and wishing he’d brought the selfie stick outside because his arm is starting to get tired.

“What was it that you said last week? Thinking of you in these trying times? _Thank you?”_

It’s a rhetorical question, but Balvin responds to him anyway. “I sent you dinner. You sent me fifty kilos of chicken breasts.”

“That’s dinner for you, right?” Maluma does his best to look innocent.

Balvin gapes at him for a moment. “How did you even— Actually, I don’t care. Thanks. For the gift. And for taking up all my freezer space.”

“It’s not like you had ice cream in there,” Maluma says.

“You don’t know that. You haven’t been here.”

Balvin is pouting. Maluma rolls his eyes.

“Because we’re in _quarantine._ I’m doing my part to save the country. And the world. When’s the last time you ate ice cream, anyway?”

Balvin’s eyes dart upwards as he thinks. “Samantha’s birthday. No, wait, Nicole had some frozen coconut thing she shared with me before. It was pretty good.”

Maluma hums, readjusting his position in the hammock. “I don’t think that counts,” he says.

“Whatever,” Balvin says, and then, “I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Enjoy your chicken,” Maluma yells before Balvin cuts the call. He takes his sunglasses off and tucks an arm under his head. It’s time for a nap.

Maluma dozes on and off for a while, thinking about all the things he’s going to do when he gets out of quarantine. The top priority is traveling. He plans out an itinerary in his head, trying to decide where to go first. Maybe back to Iceland, real quick. That would be nice. He’ll have to ask Balvin to move some dates around.

He’s just starting to fall asleep for real when he’s startled awake with the news that a truck is at the gate, trying to make a delivery. 

Maluma checks the time. It’s only been half an hour, which is just long enough that he probably won’t be able to go back to sleep. He sighs and gets out of the hammock, making his way towards the driveway to see what’s going on.

There’s a nondescript delivery truck idling in his driveway. Maluma walks over to the driver’s window, careful not to get too close as he asks what’s going on.

“Delivery,” the driver says, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Which, okay. Maybe that’s fair.

“I didn’t order anything,” Maluma says, eyeing the truck. 

“Well, someone did. It’s already paid for. You want it or not? Come on, man. I gotta get back to the warehouse.”

Maluma shrugs, and the driver takes that as a yes, getting out of the truck to open up the back. Maluma walks around slowly, keeping two meters of space between them, to see what’s going on. The driver opens the door, and even though Maluma is standing pretty far back from the truck, a blast of cold air hits them both. Maluma sees ten cases of coconut ice cream inside.

“Fuck, he’s fast,” he mutters to himself.

The driver turns to look at him. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” Maluma says, and he helps the driver unload, taking turns so as to not get too close to one another.

The driver leaves, and Maluma looks at the newly acquired frozen delights sitting on his kitchen counter. He starts moving them to the freezer when he notices that there’s an invoice taped to the top box. He reads,

> CTD: 10 helados de coco.
> 
> Nota especial: “Escriba aquí son los helados que tuve que botar del congelador punto espero que disfrutes colón paréntesis besos coma jota.”

Maluma takes a picture and uploads it to Instagram, careful to crop the second half of the message before continuing on to the freezer. It takes some rearranging, but he manages to get all ten boxes stuffed inside.

—

Maluma decides on a response about a week later. Inspiration strikes him as he’s sorting through old computer files. He’s trying to clear up some space on his harddrive when he stumbles upon headshots from 2012.

He looks at himself as a teenager, white tank top and skinny arms, trying to cool, and he has to laugh. It’s perfect. He orders the largest print size available and pays for rush shipping. The print arrives the next day, and he signs it as obnoxiously as he possibly can, in gold, glittery marker, adding a little note underneath, _To my biggest fan colón paréntesis besos coma jota._

He sends it express, hoping he got it shipped on time for it to get there in the morning, and then he goes to see how the horses are doing.

The reaction comes a couple days late. Balvin texts him at five am, and Maluma reads the message when he wakes up at ten thir— eleven in the morning.

_Is this even legal for me to have in my posession?_

Maluma rolls his eyes and sends a voice note. “Yes, _viejo,_ I was legal then.”

He hasn’t even set his phone down before it buzzes again.

_Barely._

_Well i’m def legal now so what’s the problem_

_Show me how legal u are_

And then there’s an incoming video call, so Maluma’s pretty glad he hasn’t gotten out of bed yet.

—

Balvin, of course, has to one up him, the insufferable bastard. Maluma groans when he sees the delivery truck idling in his driveway again. He walks over, surprised to see the same person who delivered his ice creams. That doesn’t seem like Balvin’s style, but Maluma’s not complaining. The coconut was pretty good, and he’s almost out.

“Hey,” Maluma says. “Delivery?” He grins, trying to make a joke out of it, but the driver isn’t having it.

“Yes,” is the only response he gets.

Maluma sighs. He heads around to the back of the truck, prepared to help unload more ice cream. The driver unlatches the door and rolls it up, revealing the contents of the truck, and Maluma is stunned. There’s no ice cream. There is instead a life-sized, cardboard cutout of Balvin standing in the middle of the otherwise empty truck.

“Sign please,” the driver says, holding a clipboard out at arms length. Maluma uses his own pen, even though the driver is wearing gloves. The driver nods approvingly before getting back in the truck and driving away.

Maluma stands in his driveway, staring at cardboard Balvin. The cutout is based on an old photo, and not a particularly flattering one. Balvin is overweight. His hair and his forehead seem to be competing for who can produce the most grease. Maluma eyes him uncertainty.

Maluma sighs before picking up the figure and taking it inside, wondering where he’s even going to store it. First he puts it in the living room, but the thing is unnerving. Clyde barks aggressively at the cutout, and Bonnie sniffs it distastefully. Maluma moves it to the storage space, but then he feels guilty about hiding it away out of sight.

“You are a pain in the ass,” he tells the cutout. Fortunately, it doesn’t reply.

Maluma thinks about putting it in the bathroom, lurking ominously behind the shower curtain, but then he remembers he doesn’t have guests to scare, and that would only backfire if he wakes up in the middle of the night.

Eventually, he decides to stick it in one of the guest bedrooms and lock the door, guilt be damned, lest it escape and hunt him for sport in his own house. When this is all over, it’ll be a nice surprise for whoever decides to stay over.

The one positive to this new acquisition is that Maluma knows exactly how to respond. He goes to his computer and pulls up Google. He types “almohada corporal personalizada,” and laments the fact that he immediately starts getting ads featuring anime women in not a lot of clothing.

He’s half an hour into designing the perfect pillow when he realizes that the site he’s chosen, the one with the least amount of hentai ads, takes a minimum of four weeks for custom orders. Not willing to risk another foray into that part of the internet, Maluma thinks he might just let Balvin win this one.

But then, he _realizes._

Feeling extremely narcissistic, he types “maluma body pillow” and hits enter. Lo and behold, it exists, and it’s ready to ship in three to five business days.

—

Maluma is lying in bed a few days later when his phone buzzes, waking him up from his nap. He complains to the dog lying next to the bed, or at least he thinks he does. There was a dog there when he went to sleep. There’s probably still one there now.

He begrudgingly grabs his phone without looking at it, first holding it upside down before noticing. He turns it around, and sees a picture of the note he included with the body pillow.

> Josue Albaro Ocasio Balbin:
> 
> Aquí estoy yo para calentarte la cama vacía parcerito.
> 
> Muchos besos coma jota.

The picture is accompanied by the message, _Déjate ya con besos coma jota._

Maluma laughs, stretching an arm off the side of the bed to see if any fluffy ears are still there to receive pets. His fingers make contact, and then he hears the thumping of a tail against the floor. He’s pretty sure it’s Bonnie, but he’s not going to lean over and check. He keeps scratching the ears of whoever it is while he writes with the other hand.

_Ya no quieres mis besos :(_

Balvin writes and deletes a couple times before he video calls instead. 

“Are you still in bed?” is the first thing he says when Maluma picks up.

“Attack, Bonnie!” Maluma says, leaning over the side of the bed to show Bonnie the camera.

“That’s Clyde,” says Balvin, a smug look on his stupid face.

“There’s no way that you can know that,” Maluma grumbles, choosing to ignore the fact that Balvin is right.

“Show me again.”

“Wouldn’t you rather talk to me?” Maluma bats his eyelashes and does not put Clyde back on camera.

“Sure,” Balvin says. He must be feeling generous.

“I miss you,” Maluma says. He collapses back onto the pillows in an effort to demonstrate how much.

“I know,” Balvin says, and then before Maluma can reply, “I miss you, too. Thanks for the pillow. He does keep the bed warm.”

“That’s only temporary.” Maluma points an accusatory finger at the camera.

Balvin holds his hands up, surrendering, and Maluma narrows his eyes in suspicion. “How are you doing that?”

Balvin frowns. “What?”

“How are you not holding the phone?”

Balvin looks at him like he is an especially dumb and fat baby animal for a moment before saying, “I have a phone stand.”

“Oh,” is all Maluma can say.

“I’ll send you one.”

Maluma sits back up, laughing. “Let’s go on vacation.” Balvin purses his lips, and Maluma adds quickly, “When this is over. Not now.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Let’s go back to Iceland.”

Balvin shakes his head. “Too cold.”

“Well, where do you want to go, then?”

“Anywhere.”

Maluma rolls his eyes. “Anywhere, but not Iceland.”

Balvin laughs. “Anywhere with you,” he says, and Maluma makes an obnoxious _aww_ sound. But he quiets down as Balvin starts describing all the places they’re going to visit when life goes back to normal. He starts out with the usual suspects, Paris and Venice, Bali and the Maldives, then starts naming places Maluma’s not sure he could find on a map, Vientiane and Varna and Victoria Falls. He talks so long in his calm, quiet voice, that Maluma starts to drift off, not sure if Balvin is even describing real cities anymore. 

When he wakes up, he realizes two things. First, that he fell asleep for real, and second, that Balvin hung up at some point. Maluma leans over the edge of the bed and sees that Clyde has left, too.

Maluma gets up slowly, and shuffles downstairs, in search of some coffee. He turns on the pot and waits, pacing around while the water boils. He walks lazily around the house, stretching and yawning. He stops when he sees an envelope taped to the front window.

He opens his front door, glances around and sees no one, of course, and takes the envelope inside. He pours his coffee and takes a sip before opening up the envelope. Inside is a thick piece of paper cut into the approximate size and shape of a plane ticket.

Maluma reads “Aerolineas Arcoíris” at the top of the paper. The passenger’s name is a horrible bastardization of his own, and the assigned seat is “In my lap.” He’s departing MDE at 11:11 and arriving “Anywhere, even Iceland. Love, J.”

**Author's Note:**

> The working title for this was “some kind of quarantine fic where they send each other increasingly ridiculous gifts.” Real title from the first Lady Gaga song I’ve heard since like 2014. Also, this is an AU because they’re _actually obeying social distancing guidelines._
> 
> Mil gracias to Itzel, who knows everything.


End file.
